For
long term results, all diets either succeed or fail due to providing
the appropriate amount of calories. I always talk about “appropriate
to maintain your goal weight” to rule out unhealthy over
restriction, but as long as you are consuming less than is required
to maintain your current weight, you will lose weight.

Regardless
of absolutely everything else, at the end of the day you're either
getting the right amount or you aint. It really is that simple.

Well...
almost.

Appropriate
calories is the top priority, but we also need to pay attention to
the ratio of calories from protein, carbohydrates and dietary fats as
well. Contrary to popular belief, all of these macronutrients are
important, although ideal ratios will vary from one person to the
next.

By
now you can probably imagine how this theory on nutrition got its
name. Someone asks “I'm trying to lose weight, is it OK to eat
[insert particular food choice here]?”, and the answer invariably
is “if it fits your macros”. In other words, if overall intake is
suitable to fuel, recover and adapt to exercise while maintaining
your goal weight, individual choices of foods do not matter.

Now
quite often the particular food that they might be asking about is a
perfectly healthy, normal choice of foods that there's no good reason
to avoid. With that being said though, even the healthiest foods will
cause weight gain if eating them means that you end up consuming more
calories than are necessary to maintain your current weight.
Similarly, even a less healthy food choice will not cause weight gain
unless you exceed your maintenance level of calories.

So, does
this mean people can eat junk food and still lose weight?

It
depends. Junk food tends to pack a lot of calories into a small
amount of food, and usually those calories are predominately from
sugars or fats. Junk food also has that addictive quality where (if
you're anything like me) even though you say “I'll just have one”,
you end up going back for another 6, or until there's none left. So,
while it's possible to include some food purely for enjoyment rather
than for nutritional content, it makes it a lot harder to end up
meeting your targets for overall calories and macronutrient ratios at
the end of the day.

Why IIFYM is
the logical choice for weight loss.

OK!
Going back to that list of common diet tips from earlier, astute
readers might have picked up a couple of references to some
legitimate approaches in amongst a lot of stuff which is pretty much
nonsense. So if you're offended because you think I'm talking about
favourite approach, or something your favourite body builder uses, or
for any other reason because you think I'm saying “that's no good,
that won't work” hold up for a moment while I explain.

First
up, I'm not in competition shape and I do not coach people in contest
preparation. If anyone out there wants to tell me that specific meal
timing or frequency (some of the other stuff too) gives them an edge
in contest preparation I am happy to take their word for it. With that said, the body
builders I follow and attempt to learn from mostly just talk in terms of “this macro ratio
for off season, and this ratio for contest preparation”.

Either
way, we're not talking about nutrition plans for contest preparation
here. What I'm interested in is taking people from overweight or
obesity into amazing shape, and getting the best results possible
with the simplest possible approach.

So
in the case of an overweight or an obese person who may have tried to
lose weight without lasting success several times already, the last
thing they need is a complicated plan that focuses on the minute
details rather than the big picture. They most often already have a
bad relationship with food and have formed any number of negative
beliefs about their ability to lose weight (“I can never stick to a
diet” or “I don't like healthy food”, for example).

The
last thing these people need is some complicated set of rules that is
at best fine tuning for elite level competitors, and at worst
entirely irrelevant.

Instead,
what if you could build your own weight loss diet based on foods you
will actually eat, and timed to fit your schedule? As long as it
actually does fit your macros, how could you possibly go wrong?

Making it
work.

Obviously
it's not just a matter of choosing your favourite foods and going to
town on them. We need to determine our target calorie and
macronutrient guidelines first, and then start developing a meal plan
to suit. One option would be keep notes on all meals, snacks and
beverages consumed in a day, and then tally up the macronutritional
content. From here it is easy to see which are the bad choices that
are putting you into surplus calories (which means weight gain), and
swap them out for some more appropriate choices. In many cases it may
not require a particularly drastic change in eating habits.Oh, you still want more?

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